


The Wild Hunt

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Lord John Series - Diana Gabaldon, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 3: Voyager, F/M, The Scottish Prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: 'Men', Fraser said without hesitation. 'Souls. I was thinking the same myself. Though ye see them more on a storm-tossed night.'- The Scottish Prisoner pg. 347An exploration into Jamie's experience with The Wild Hunt and its' repercussions.





	The Wild Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> A missing moment that incorporates The Scottish Prisioner and the beginning of Voyager.

The Wild Hunt

October 1751

 

The chill curled through his breeches, the buckskin drying hard against his skin. His shirt is soaked through with sweat and cold as he shifts the weight of the carcass against his shoulder blades. It had been a small stag, but with points on its antlers when he had seen its’ head rise above the goarse, ready in the first full throes of autumn maturity.

 

That had been in the evening, with the chill rush of the wind to blow away the clouds and let the stars spark through, a tapestry of silver against a deep, velvet blue. The hunter’s moon had lit its glazing eye, soft and brown and blank by the time he had reached it, resting against a half hidden stone to catch his breath. The weight of his dirk had already been to hand, reaching to cup the muzzle, the iris clouding the manner of its dying in a reflection of blank silver. The skin had been sticky beneath his fingers, watching the blade slide easily between fur, muscle and bone.

 

_The blood had begun to splurt hot and heavy over his hand, the throat neatly severed before he feels it. An icy hand has reached itself inside his chest, gripping at his heart in a sudden, violent stab of terror. Above him, the wind moans across the moor, creaking through the wizened shapes of the thorn trees, bent double like crones over their invisible burden. Sweat begins to pool at the back of his hands at the thought of the trees, the lump in his throat suddenly choking him._

_He had heard them._

_Had heard strange wailing cries that floated on the wind for an instant before vanishing, lost in the silence over the moor._

_Heard the quickening thud of his heart lodged somewhere in his throat as he pulls himself to his feet, hastily wiping the blade clean._

_And then came the scream._

_It had been a woman’s scream, one that he had heard often enough in Paris and yet…_

 

_A woman’s scream that was followed by the sudden, silent thundering of horses hooves galloping over the moor, the fearie faces leering white and ragged in the night._

_Squeezing his eyes shut, he had known what they wanted. They wanted blood, their howling, screeching cries echoing over the duns and hills, echoing into his bones as he stumbled away into the night, crashing down towards the small burn that snaked its way across the bottom of the hill into a deep, peat filled pool. The water did nothing to calm him, but as he crouched there, the freezing stillness brought a slight feeling of something that could have been relief._

And now it was nearing noon as he shouldered the beast once more, feeling the stiff, soft hair prickle against the back of his neck. His body aches with the cold, his shirt pressed tight to aching ribs.

 

Lallybroch rears before him in the weak November sun, the windows dark in the light of day. At the halls window, he sees a child’s face, with Ian’s soft brown eyes and a crop of Jenny’s ebony curls, hovering for a moment before splitting into a grin. The face is just beginning to lose the roundness of childhood, the lines and bends of hardening bones that gave hints of the man that his eldest nephew would become sending a sudden shiver down his spine.

 

Twelve years old now, he thinks, nodding to the boy who instantly disappears; no doubt to tell his parents and siblings that their prodigal uncle was home.

 

Twelve years old, because the child, the child that, God willing, Claire had borne back to the world beyond the cleft stone at Craigh na Dune would be six.

 

_‘Lord that she may be safe! She and the child!’_

Shifting the weight of the carcass again, he makes his way round the kailyard to the kitchen door and the back hall. The house seems to expand around him as he steps inside, eyes blinking in the sudden gloom. Easing the stag from his shoulders, he tries not to look at the empty space where the head had been or the lack of a left hind haunch.

 

Whoever had got to his deer had taken the huntsman’s share of the meat. A soft growl catches at the back of his throat at the sight of it on the scrubbed table, muttering the gralloch prayer that old John Murray had taught him and Ian and Willie when he had learnt the intricacies of stalking prey.

 

 _‘O Lord, bless the blood and the flesh of this the creature that You gave me._  
_Created by Your hand as You created man,_  
_Life given for life._  
_That me and mine may eat with thanks for the gift,_  
_That me and mine may give thanks for Your own sacrifice of blood and flesh,_  
_Life given for life.’_

 

Whoever had got at the deer had also gralloched it with surprising accuracy, the line from missing leg to body and empty stomach as neat as any tailor’s seam.

 

The sight of the neat, precise stitches make the faces return; those leering, ghoulish countenances stark white in the light of the hunter’s moon rearing up behind his eyes.

 

Desperately he tries to shake them away, his breath suddenly coming too fast, the stiff fingers of his right hand trembling as they grip his dirk.

 

‘Jamie? Jamie, a _bhalaiach?’_ Her steps are the slow, waddling gait of advanced pregnancy, her face with the sharp, blue cats’ eyes that mirrored his own exactly, caught between worry and relief.

 

‘Jenny’, her name comes as a whisper, as he moves away from the carcass towards her, wanting nothing more than to drink in the soft complexities of her scent; candlewax and cinnamon buried under her cheeks, the first, faint hint of milk catching at her breast. He remembered the same, soft scent of motherhood had clung to Claire during her first pregnancy and swallows thickly.

 

Faith would have been eight now, had she lived.

 

‘Come away Jamie,’ he barely feels Jenny’s hand reaching up to grip his own, prising away the dagger from cold, clenched fingers. His sisters’ voice is soft with unspoken understanding as she draws him close, reaching up to card swollen fingers through his hair, her voice a murmur of comforting sweet nothings.

 

‘Come away lad’, he hears her murmur into his hair, as if he was one of her own children and not her brother and a father himself.

 

A father to a child whom he would never get to see.

 

‘Everyone’s been waiting for ye,’ he heard Jenny say, feeling a weak smile catch at his lips at the chuckle in her voice.

 

The mantle of humanity was slowly beginning to return, and reaching down to press his sister’s hand, he follows her into the warm hubbub of the kitchen and his family.

 

* * *

 

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review!
> 
> Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: Dance of the Druids (Outlander Season 1 OST)


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